Jarhead_h:How about their deliberate confusion of libertarianism and Ayn Rand's cult? Am really tired of that shiat.

This is like a Southerner complaining that different parts of the south have different accents and thus there is no such thing as a Southern accent. Viewed from the outside they are all pretty much the same.

I doubt many self called libertarians can explain the difference between their views and Randianism, and of the sub-cults of libertarianism those that do make a distinction they each do it in a different way.

Zerochance:Libertarianism: Because everything will be sweet once everybody operates on the Honor System. Particularly businesses. They always do what's right.

They will with one caveat. If they mess up, we hang them. That's what most libertarians and all rapeblicans and demoncrats don't understand. The carrot and stick approach is how you make Libertarianism work. Play fair, make money, don't hurt other people or we hang you. No exceptions.

stoli n coke:It's like how a lot of 2-time Bush voters I know suddenly started referring to themselves as Libertarians back in 2006.

Some of them even come up with tortured arguments government money to churches a la "faith based initiatives", opposition to gay marriage or even the existence of gay people, etc. are consistent with "libertarianism".

Karac:Notabunny: That said, I think the public would be well served by having at least two third-party candidates in the presidential debates. I think having at least a Green and a Libertarian would turn what is now essentially a mutual press conference into an actual debate, with interesting and exciting ideas being discussed and argued. Seems simple enough. You'd only need a few extra microphones.

A few extra microphones, along with a few cowboys to rope the democratic and republican candidates and drag them onto stage with the hoi palloi. Maybe a few cattleprods too to actually get them to respond to their lessers.

Smeggy Smurf:They will with one caveat. If they mess up, we hang them. That's what most libertarians and all rapeblicans and demoncrats don't understand. The carrot and stick approach is how you make Libertarianism work. Play fair, make money, don't hurt other people or we hang you. No exceptions.

Do you hang the actual people who did the bad stuff, or just the "corporation", leaving the people alive to do more bad stuff? If the former, do you hang the rank-and-file-we-were-only-following-orders employees, or the CEO?

Smeggy Smurf:Zerochance: Libertarianism: Because everything will be sweet once everybody operates on the Honor System. Particularly businesses. They always do what's right.

They will with one caveat. If they mess up, we hang them. That's what most libertarians and all rapeblicans and demoncrats don't understand. The carrot and stick approach is how you make Libertarianism work. Play fair, make money, don't hurt other people or we hang you. No exceptions.

And what stops the corporation from enforcing its decisions through armed force? What happens when its the businesses who have the leverage to decide who gets hanged and who doesn't? They'll just give up out of a sense of fairness?

Slavery and child labor are the most profitable systems, and left to its own devices the market will gravitate toward them. Go ahead and threaten it with torches and pitchforks. They'll have tanks and machine guns, and afterward they'll take away your torches and pitchforks.

I was actually considering voting for Johnson as a "protest vote" simply because I don't like either Obama or Romney. THEN I watched the "Third Party Candidate" debate.

Now I'm voting for Obama again.

The debate crystalized for me why third party candidates are little more than also-rans and spoilers. They run on platforms that appeal to a small contingency but sound too radical to the public at large. Remember, the general populace is used to the "safe" zone the major candidates stick to and when you start jumping up and down about "legal weed", that turns off a lot of people. (Me included because I am against legal weed.)

Until someone comes along that can offer up something that combines common sense and workable solutions, third parties will never be a significant factor in politics, other than to be also-rans and spoilers.

Sergeant Grumbles:LectertheChef: Anybody who's not an under 25 white middle-class (Or higher) male and still a Libertarian is just an idiot. It's a phase that some white guys who've never known poverty go through. Most grow out of it, some don't.

pciszek:Smeggy Smurf: They will with one caveat. If they mess up, we hang them. That's what most libertarians and all rapeblicans and demoncrats don't understand. The carrot and stick approach is how you make Libertarianism work. Play fair, make money, don't hurt other people or we hang you. No exceptions.

Do you hang the actual people who did the bad stuff, or just the "corporation", leaving the people alive to do more bad stuff? If the former, do you hang the rank-and-file-we-were-only-following-orders employees, or the CEO?

You hang the bad people who implimented the bad stuff. I advocate starting with the CEO and working down until you get to the asshole exec that did it. The same goes for police. One bad cop beats the hell out of a disabled kid, hang the chief first, then the shift supervisor then the bad cop. And so forth. As long as there is evidence that the bad policy/actions/whatever have the approval of the higher ups, they're dead as well.

This does not go to say that a mail room thief hurts the CEO. Only the immediate supervisor. It would take quite a bit of work getting the particulars worked out but we have enough smart people with devious minds who can figure it out.

The whole idea is to have a solution. The assholes that hurt people without consequences will either hang or change their ways. Mostly I suspect that for the first year they'll hang. After a while though, the number of shiatheads hurting people will be reduced to the point where they no longer are a factor. Of course this will mean banks won't run as effeciently for a while but the bad apples won't be hurting the economy any more.

HairBolus:Do you know that there are Catholic Libertarians who believe in the submission of the individual to the authority of the Church because it is done willingly? Their main short term goals seem to be to get government funding for Catholic schools and abolish birth control and abortion (on libertarian grounds), though many would ultimately be ok with no publicly funded education or health care plus government restrictions on things that go against Catholic teaching.

Um, do they mean having everyone "voluntarily" submit to the authority of the Church?

Oh, and how do they plan to finance this government crackdown on birth control?

tomWright:Granny_Panties: There's about a 25)% chance Obama will legalize pot.

There's a 0% chance Romney will legalize pot.

There is a 0% chance Gary Johnson will become president.

Think about the odds...

We do not elect dictators in the U.S. (yet)

Only Congress can legalize it.

At most Obama can lobby Congress to do it, and no way is he going to take that kind of political chance. That would take too much political courage.

That's actually a common misconception. The executive can move drugs around on the drug schedule. Obama could move marijuana to schedule 5 tomorrow if he wanted. I can't link bc I'm on my phone but this article http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mobileweb/2012/04/28/jimmy-kimmel-whcd-p ot_n_1462140.html?1335705946 a little ways down quoting Eric Holder saying exactly that.

Most of the Libertarians I know also identify as Conservative. Although they take this "better than thou" attitude and speak endlessly about "The Constitution", they know they're not going to win so they count on the Republicans to hopefully do their work for them...little realizing that Republicans are not even close to being Libertarian. Yet, they soothe themselves with the idea that the Republicans will do the job they can't do, which is get rid of Fartbongo, then they go back to feeling "superior" and bashing the two major parties once the election is over.

Libertarianism...sounds great when you're 23...when you're 63, not so much.

pciszek:HairBolus: Do you know that there are Catholic Libertarians who believe in the submission of the individual to the authority of the Church because it is done willingly? Their main short term goals seem to be to get government funding for Catholic schools and abolish birth control and abortion (on libertarian grounds), though many would ultimately be ok with no publicly funded education or health care plus government restrictions on things that go against Catholic teaching.

Um, do they mean having everyone "voluntarily" submit to the authority of the Church?

Oh, and how do they plan to finance this government crackdown on birth control?

I think you made the mistake of assuming they're not "libertarians of convenience".

"I want you to make sure you sign, seal and deliver this election to Barack Obama," Bill Clinton told a rally in Denver on Tuesday night. The outcome could pivot on a handful of votes in Colorado, he said.

Gore's big problem in 2000 was not so much losing votes to Nader as it was not letting Bill campaign for him.

Seriously, the more I see Bubba out on the trail stumping for Obama the more that realization sinks in.

He's good.

Will GJ voters in CO constitute enuff of a block to influence the outcome of the election there or will the left/right vote drain off come out as a wash at the end of the day making this yet another overly speculative horse race narrative piece by the Guardian?

Guess we'll find out soon enuff.

/Anyone else find the use of "snuff out" in the piece a little over the top?

Notabunny:fta Some Democrats, haunted by Ralph Nader's torpedoing of Al Gore in 2000,

That's arguable. Two or three times more Florida Democrats voted for Bush than for Nader. Also, Gore lost his home state. That said, I think the public would be well served by having at least two third-party candidates in the presidential debates. I think having at least a Green and a Libertarian would turn what is now essentially a mutual press conference into an actual debate, with interesting and exciting ideas being discussed and argued. Seems simple enough. You'd only need a few extra microphones.

I think we should do this, even though it's so unlikely. Imagine if we did do it this way though... in 2008 you would've had Bob Barr and Cynthia McKinney up there with Obama and McCain.

LouDobbsAwaaaay:And what stops the corporation from enforcing its decisions through armed force? What happens when its the businesses who have the leverage to decide who gets hanged and who doesn't? They'll just give up out of a sense of fairness?

I expect that in Libertaria, when you go shopping for a private police force you find that every one of them has a clause in their terms of service stating "If you piss off Walmart, we will hand you over to them because you are not paying us enough to commit suicide on your behalf."

I love some of the arguments I'm hearing from Colorado about why folks are against legalizing pot.

My favorite is that Coloradians (is that what you call them?) don't want people coming to their state to buy weed and smoke. Or in other words, "please don't come to our state and spend your tourist dollars here."

Communist_Manifesto:That's actually a common misconception. The executive can move drugs around on the drug schedule. Obama could move marijuana to schedule 5 tomorrow if he wanted.

After Tianamen square, Bush Sr. announced that the INS would not be deporting anyone back to China for a while. Reagan fired all of the air traffic controllers. Presumable Obama could affect which laws get enforced and which ones get ignored. I think he could have scored BIG earlier in this race by firing everyone in the TSA and not replacing them with anyone.

I live in a state where Obama has a greater-than 10% lead over Rmoney. My big issues this election are opposing another war (Iran, Syria, etc.), civil rights (marriage equality and women's rights), and ending the "war" on drugs. I was extremely impressed with Jill Stein during an interview that I heard with her on my local NPR affiliate, but I was much less impressed with her and especially unimpressed with her running mate during an interview with Bill Moyers. I am receptive to arguments in favor of publicly-funded campaigns and nationalized healthcare. I especially like the Green Party's stance on not taking corporate donations. However, I am disappointed that the Green Party refuses to make intellectual, economist-driven arguments about economics; they use emotion and hyperbole, rather than reason.

I don't support Libertarian, laissez-faire. BP and the financial collapse of 2008 knocked that craziness out of me. But I do support getting government out of the morality business, endless wars and world policing, and laws which stifle all but the very largest corporations adept at using the government to limit competition. And, we desperately need a new party to end the GOP/Dem monopoly over our political system.

I voted for ZERO GOPers because I cannot morally justify supporting representatives of a party that gives refuge and voice to Theocrats, bigots, and anti-intellectaulists. And if I lived in most of the other states, I would've voted for Obama. But I decided to throw away my vote for President in the hopes of, one day, there being an alternative for Americans. I'm hoping that the Libertarian Party can become a (truly) fiscally-conservative and secular party of reason...for reasonable people. It isn't now, but it may be closer than the other parties.

delysid25:hey this guy that likes weed is running! Let's vote for him even though he has no chance of winning, so the guy who expressly says that he is against weed can win! Brilliant!!

Let's face it, neither mainstream candidate is pro-weed. Obama has stepped up marijuana enforcement, if anything; medical dispensaries have been closed down at a greater rate than under Bush. Plus, whenever he's been asked about legalizing it, all he does is laugh. Obama is not pro-pot, and I doubt his position will "evolve" like his position on gay marriage did.

That said, I'm pulling for Obama anyway because I'm an adult and I realize that weed is not the only issue in the world that matters.

thornhill:My favorite is that Coloradians (is that what you call them?) don't want people coming to their state to buy weed and smoke. Or in other words, "please don't come to our state and spend your tourist dollars here."

Coloradoans like to make a show of detesting tourists, but tourists are infinitely better than the people who come here, buy property, and build housing developments on it. No one should have been allowed to move to Colorado after I got here.

HeartBurnKid:delysid25: hey this guy that likes weed is running! Let's vote for him even though he has no chance of winning, so the guy who expressly says that he is against weed can win! Brilliant!!

Let's face it, neither mainstream candidate is pro-weed. Obama has stepped up marijuana enforcement, if anything; medical dispensaries have been closed down at a greater rate than under Bush. Plus, whenever he's been asked about legalizing it, all he does is laugh. Obama is not pro-pot, and I doubt his position will "evolve" like his position on gay marriage did.

That said, I'm pulling for Obama anyway because I'm an adult and I realize that weed is not the only issue in the world that matters.

This. I love pot and think it's farking stupid it's not legal like alcohol is but life is more than just getting stoned.

thornhill:I love some of the arguments I'm hearing from Colorado about why folks are against legalizing pot.

My favorite is that Coloradians (is that what you call them?) don't want people coming to their state to buy weed and smoke. Or in other words, "please don't come to our state and spend your tourist dollars here."

I want your weed smoking tax dollars! I'd love for Denver to be the New Amsterdam, Amsterdam is an awesome city.

pciszek:HairBolus: Do you know that there are Catholic Libertarians who believe in the submission of the individual to the authority of the Church because it is done willingly? Their main short term goals seem to be to get government funding for Catholic schools and abolish birth control and abortion (on libertarian grounds), though many would ultimately be ok with no publicly funded education or health care plus government restrictions on things that go against Catholic teaching.

Um, do they mean having everyone "voluntarily" submit to the authority of the Church?

Oh, and how do they plan to finance this government crackdown on birth control?

Silly, if birth control is illegal then enforcing it is a police matter just like the police are responsible for catching murderers and thieves.

Most libertarians, while against paying for government "services" in general, still concede that a government needs to be responsible for police and military forces--.

Communist_Manifesto:That's actually a common misconception. The executive can move drugs around on the drug schedule. Obama could move marijuana to schedule 5 tomorrow if he wanted. I can't link bc I'm on my phone but this article http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mobileweb/2012/04/28/jimmy-kimmel-whcd-p ot_n_1462140.html?1335705946 a little ways down quoting Eric Holder saying exactly that.

Huh. I had not considered that. I would want to know more details though. I know next to nothing about the different levels in the 'Schedule'.

What would rescheduling it to 5 get us? Could it be imported and treated under the law like alcohol is?

I live in a state where Obama has a greater-than 10% lead over Rmoney. My big issues this election are opposing another war (Iran, Syria, etc.), civil rights (marriage equality and women's rights), and ending the "war" on drugs. I was extremely impressed with Jill Stein during an interview that I heard with her on my local NPR affiliate, but I was much less impressed with her and especially unimpressed with her running mate during an interview with Bill Moyers. I am receptive to arguments in favor of publicly-funded campaigns and nationalized healthcare. I especially like the Green Party's stance on not taking corporate donations. However, I am disappointed that the Green Party refuses to make intellectual, economist-driven arguments about economics; they use emotion and hyperbole, rather than reason.

I don't support Libertarian, laissez-faire. BP and the financial collapse of 2008 knocked that craziness out of me. But I do support getting government out of the morality business, endless wars and world policing, and laws which stifle all but the very largest corporations adept at using the government to limit competition. And, we desperately need a new party to end the GOP/Dem monopoly over our political system.

I voted for ZERO GOPers because I cannot morally justify supporting representatives of a party that gives refuge and voice to Theocrats, bigots, and anti-intellectaulists. And if I lived in most of the other states, I would've voted for Obama. But I decided to throw away my vote for President in the hopes of, one day, there being an alternative for Americans. I'm hoping that the Libertarian Party can become a (truly) fiscally-conservative and secular party of reason...for reasonable people. It isn't now, but it may be closer than the other parties.

I live in a state where Obama has a greater-than 10% lead over Rmoney. My big issues this election are opposing another war (Iran, Syria, etc.), civil rights (marriage equality and women's rights), and ending the "war" on drugs. I was extremely impressed with Jill Stein during an interview that I heard with her on my local NPR affiliate, but I was much less impressed with her and especially unimpressed with her running mate during an interview with Bill Moyers. I am receptive to arguments in favor of publicly-funded campaigns and nationalized healthcare. I especially like the Green Party's stance on not taking corporate donations. However, I am disappointed that the Green Party refuses to make intellectual, economist-driven arguments about economics; they use emotion and hyperbole, rather than reason.

I don't support Libertarian, laissez-faire. BP and the financial collapse of 2008 knocked that craziness out of me. But I do support getting government out of the morality business, endless wars and world policing, and laws which stifle all but the very largest corporations adept at using the government to limit competition. And, we desperately need a new party to end the GOP/Dem monopoly over our political system.

I voted for ZERO GOPers because I cannot morally justify supporting representatives of a party that gives refuge and voice to Theocrats, bigots, and anti-intellectaulists. And if I lived in most of the other states, I would've voted for Obama. But I decided to throw away my vote for President in the hopes of, one day, there being an alternative for Americans. I'm hoping that the Libertarian Party can become a (truly) fiscally-conservative and secular party of reason...for reasonable people. It isn't now, but it may be closer than the other parties.

Cool story Bro.

Thanks!

But, in all honesty, it wasn't some of my best work. I wish that I could fix a few grammar issues and/or had more coffee in me before posting.

Notabunny:fta Some Democrats, haunted by Ralph Nader's torpedoing of Al Gore in 2000,

That's arguable. Two or three times more Florida Democrats voted for Bush than for Nader. Also, Gore lost his home state. That said, I think the public would be well served by having at least two third-party candidates in the presidential debates. I think having at least a Green and a Libertarian would turn what is now essentially a mutual press conference into an actual debate, with interesting and exciting ideas being discussed and argued. Seems simple enough. You'd only need a few extra microphones.

Democrats in the Florida panhandle are really just southern Democrats; they're conservative and always vote Republican.